How? !
by K.M
Summary: Astrid's point of view as she reflects on Hiccup's mysterious improvement in Dragon Training.


How? !

by K.M.

7-5-2010

How to Train Your Dragon created by Cressida Cowell

Copyright 2003 Cressida Cowell/Hodder Children's Books

Trademark & Copyright 2009 DreamWorks Animation L.L.C. All Rights Reserved

* * *

"Argh!" Astrid cried in frustration as she slammed the Dragon Manual shut.

How? ! How was he doing it? !

When Dragon Training had first started, Hiccup had been doing about as well as most people had expected from him.

Terribly!

Then, practically overnight, he had suddenly started sprinting towards the head of the class!

Her ego wasn't so big that she didn't potentially expect some competition when training had started. But from Hiccup of all people? !

For the most part up until now, she had simply been pouring her frustrations into her personal workout sessions, hoping that the extra energy might further help to improve her skills that much more.

But now, they were nearing the end of their training and it had gotten to the point where she was basically trying to keep up with HIM!

And it was really starting to eat away at her!

She had been trying to figure out just how exactly Hiccup was managing to improve so drastically, but she was having very little luck in discovering the answer.

Hiccup's first signs of improvement had been with the Zippleback, and when she thought about this she realized that it had happened not long after Gobber had suggested to all of them that they read through the Dragon Manual.

She thought perhaps the answer might lie in there.

Sure, she had read the manual before (even somewhat in depth), but maybe she had missed something.

But after going through the manual again several times, she still couldn't find the answers that she was looking for.

If there were any secrets hiding in the manual to explain Hiccup's sudden success, then she just wasn't finding them!

That then brought her to another possibility. That Hiccup was getting some training from someone in secret.

In some ways it made sense. After all, Hiccup was disappearing for hours each day.

And what with his being the son of the Chief, how poorly his training had started, and his clearly needing any extra help that he could get because of this...

Well, under those circumstances she could potentially see someone taking some pity on the boy and giving him some extra tips and such.

She could even see such a person wanting to keep any private training a secret, so as not to discourage the other trainees.

The only real problem with this theory was as to WHO exactly might have been giving him this extra training.

After all, a good portion of the Vikings were off in search of the dragons' nest.

And given Hiccup's vast improvement, he would have had to have gotten tips from someone who was at least an expert.

Sure, there was still a decent amount of Vikings left in the village. After all, Stoic wasn't foolish enough to leave the village defenseless, but he had made certain to take the best dragon fighters with him.

That pretty much left Gobber as the best dragon fighter remaining in the village.

She could certainly see Gobber giving Hiccup some extra tips (Hiccup was his apprentice, after all), but Gobber had seemed as genuinely surprised as everyone else at Hiccup's improvement.

And frankly, she highly doubted that Gobber's acting abilities were good enough to feign the surprise that he was showing.

That only left the elders that remained in the village.

It made sense, but the few times that she had checked the village during Hiccup's absences, they had all been accounted for!

So how was he doing it? HOW? !

She had caught sight of Hiccup sneaking off once, but lost track of him before she could do anything about it.

Sooner or later she would manage to follow Hiccup, and finally find out exactly what was going on.

And then, there wouldn't be any more surprises!

* * *

Author's Note:

At the moment, I don't exactly plan to add to this one, so it will basically stand as a one-shot.

But who knows, that could always change

For some bizarre reason, it seems that this site won't allow question marks and exclamation points next to each other, which is why I was forced to put a space between them.

I'm not sure how else they expect a question to be shown as being forceful without this ability.


End file.
